What is Lag BaOmer, the death party of young Argentinian Daniel Embón

The holiday of Lag Ba’omer, where Argentinian student Daniel Embón, 21, died, is a celebration that takes place year after year between Passover and Shavuot, and thousands of pilgrims participate.

The drastic drop in covid cases in Israel and the success of the vaccination plan have allowed the celebration to be massive this year. The result was tragic: a human rush that left 45 dead.

What is Lag Ba’omer? And what is being celebrated?

The first thing to know is that this is one of the most important holidays in the Jewish calendar and is celebrated between Pesach and Shavuot. Lag Ba’omer is a festival based on the hebrew calendar and therefore has no fixed date in the Gregorian calendar.

Lag Ba’omer (literally, “33 of Omer”) is celebrated at thirty-third day of the Omer, and is the name given to the 18th day of lyar (eighth month of the Jewish year) in the Hebrew calendar. This year, the celebration began with the departure of the first star on April 29. It is a pilgrimage feast, which was not allowed last year due to the pandemic.

The day the plague ended

Following the tradition, sadness and regret which accompany the counting of the Omer (name given to the 49 days or 7 weeks between Pesach and Shavuot) are interrupted on this day of celebrations.

And two bases accompany this feeling of joy: the first is that on this day the plague has ended which had arisen among the followers of Rabbi Akiva (a sage of Jewish law and tradition who lived between the 1st and 2nd century AD).

The second is that on this date the death of Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai (a rabbi who lived in the Galilee during the time of Roman rule and after the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem) is commemorated.

In turn, the Omer was a measure of barley which was offered in the Temple in Jerusalem on the second day of Pesach, thus beginning the harvest in all Israeli lands. From that day on, the Jewish people began to count a full seven weeks until the feast of Shavut. And when that day came they offered themselves in the temple the first harvests, coinciding with the remembrance of the delivery of the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai.

The events of the second century

It was in the 2nd century at Lag Ba’omer that he died Rabbi Shimón Bar Yojai, better known as Rashbi, and was the prodigal pupil of Rabbi Akiva. Rashbi is credited with the authorship of the Zohar (which, along with the Sefer letzirá, is the central book of the kabbalistic stream).

Before he died, Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai asked his students to make this day a holiday and a day of joy. And among other matters, Lag Baomer is also celebrated, for the aforementioned plague which decimated the students of Rabbi Akiva, killing more than 24 thousand, and it ended on the same day.

Bows, arrows and large bonfires

For generations this day has been celebrated with bows, arrows and big bonfires in the forests, to commemorate what the ancestors did during the time of Roman rule in Israel.

During these years Torah reading was prohibited and that is why students went to the forests dressed in bows and arrows to prevent the Roman patrols from realizing that they were they were going to study Torah, and they thought they were actually hunting.

Currently in Israel, it is customary to visit the tomb of Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai in the northern city of Meron. Thousands of people make a pilgrimage there year after year, turning the city into a great mass celebration.